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India-China border clashes smack of PRC pressure tactics

FORUM Staff

Tensions mounted in early May 2020 along borders between India and the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in the Himalayas, according to media accounts in India.

A pair of violent standoffs occurred between the two nation’s military forces at two distinct locations along the 3,448-kilometer Line of Actual Control (LAC) after People’s Liberation Army (PLA) troops pitched tents in a disputed area, a tactic that historically has preceded PLA construction projects, according to the Times of India newspaper.

After incurring injuries during the flare-ups, which involved fistfights and stone-pelting, each side increased its troop numbers close to a long-disputed, nondemarcated region near Tibet that has served as a “trigger point” since the 1962 war between the two nations, the Times reported. (Pictured: This part of Tawang, Arunachal Pradesh, is near the Line of Actual Control that separates India and the People’s Republic of China.)

Although military leaders quickly defused the skirmishes, some analysts have asserted the renewed tensions may be tied to broader issues. That could include Beijing’s push for India to toe the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) line on Taiwan and on an international coronavirus probe as well as Beijing’s desire to deflect attention from its faltering economy.

Indian officials reported nearly 490 Chinese border transgressions in 2019, a 50% increase from 2018, Bloomberg News reported. The PRC does not release data on Indian transgressions, according to the online magazine The Diplomat.

Indian analyst Sreemoy Talukdar linked the recent escalation to India’s new role as chair of the World Health Organization (WHO) executive board, which it assumed May 22, 2020, according to an article published on Firstpost, an Indian news website.

“[T]he sudden Chinese belligerence at the border has coincided with India’s chance to assume a leadership role at the World Health Organization,” he wrote in the May 14 article, calling the PRC’s actions “a dare” to the government of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

“It is not a coincidence that just when India has been presented with an opportunity to expand its leverage over China — the pandemic probe and Taiwan’s elevation — Beijing has started pressing some of the buttons to remind New Delhi that it must not overemphasize on that leverage because China can and will complicate India’s security situation and heighten the costs of maintaining stability in border.”

India should resist such pressure, analysts assert. “As important as it is to support India’s partners, it is also in New Delhi’s interest to ensure that China does not gain disproportionate influence over such bodies because that has consequences for India’s interests too,” Rajesh Rajagopalan, a professor of international politics at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi, wrote in The Print, an online newspaper headquartered in New Delhi.

PRC aggression has not been limited to India. In recent months, the PRC has increased its provocative activities in the South China and East China seas and elsewhere, harassing fishermen and ships and increasing military flybys, flotillas and exercises, and suppressing pro-democracy movements in Hong Kong and Taiwan.

“Beijing’s flexing of muscle on its periphery” has “direct link[s] with reports that China’s GDP [gross domestic product] shrank 6.8% year-over-year in the first three months of 2020,” Talukdar wrote in Firstpost.

“As [the] Chinese economy shrinks, the political legitimacy of the authoritarian CCP suffers a concomitant decline leading to opening up of fissures within the party. Suddenly, stringing together of seemingly innocuous events lead to an indication that the impregnable authority of [CCP General Secretary] Xi Jinping and political stability of China is under threat.”

The PRC, in turn, has blamed India for increased tension and violence at the border, according to Business Insidernewspaper. “India is merely seeking to divert its domestic attention and pressure since the COVID-19 pandemic impacted its economy,” a PRC-linked analyst told Global Times, a CCP-run tabloid newspaper.

India’s former Foreign Secretary Vijay Gokhale articulated signs that Xi may be facing waning support.

“President Xi may, possibly, be quietly preparing for another contingency: a challenge to his authority,” Gokhale wrote in a May 7, 2020, article on the Observer Research Foundation website. “Buried in the media reporting on the recent meetings that the leadership has held is the phrase, ‘Stability is the big picture.’ The regime uses such phrases when it senses a threat.”

The PRC’s aggressive activities at the border in recent years have pushed India closer to the United States, Jeff M. Smith, a research fellow at The Heritage Foundation in Washington, D.C., wrote in a May 15, 2020, article for The Diplomat.

The U.S. provided intelligence to India during previous border incidents, such as the 2017 Doklam standoff over Chinese road construction on the plateau, claimed by Bhutan and the PRC. In 2018, India broadened its military information and resource exchanges with the U.S. through the Communications Compatibility and Security Agreement.

The United States also helped the Indian military acquire U.S.-made attack helicopters, surveillance and heavy-lift transport aircraft, and artillery. “Should there be another prolonged Doklam-like incident at the border or inadvertent escalation, India will likely again be looking to the U.S. for diplomatic and intelligence support, and calibrating its Indo-Pacific strategy accordingly,” Smith wrote.

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